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The Most Disappointing Games Of 2012

2012 was a great year for video games, but there were still some pretty major disappointments.

Why do we come up with all these lists at the end of the year and the start of the next one? Some people hate lists, and I can understand that. Lists can be an easy way out.

But I think lists are also a good way to celebrate the things we enjoy in life, and celebration is important for people. For instance, when we talk about the best video games of 2012 we’re in many ways celebrating our fondest gaming moments and memories of the past year, and musing on what we’d like to see this coming year.

Even if we write up the most disappointing games of 2012, we’re mostly just venting; and in a weird sort of way, that’s a kind of celebration too.

2011 was certainly a year of disappointing games. Perhaps the most calamitous release of the year was Dragon Age 2 which fans of the original felt was a complete departure from everything that made Origins so great. The backlash was fierce and things only got worse in December….

…when MMO fans eagerly loaded up BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic but quickly grew tired of the game with its out-of-date graphics, lack of end-game, and numerous other problems. That it was a subscription-based MMO in an age of free-to-play online games only made matters worse, and EA moved the game to a F2P model in 2012.

Speaking of free-to-play, 2011 also saw the release of Dungeon Hunter 3, in which Gameloft abandoned the pay model in favor of freemium and ditched any semblance of RPG or story while they were at it. 2011 had a bunch of gaming disappointments.

But 2012 may still take the cake.

I won’t list all of the most disappointing or controversial games of the year—I didn’t play titles like Fable: The Journey, Black Ops Declassified for the PS Vita or Resident Evil 6—and I’ll only list titles I’ve played myself. Furthermore, a game like Paper Mario: Sticker Star disappointed many fans of the Paper Mario franchise, but since I hadn’t played any of the other titles I couldn’t very well describe myself as disappointed in the game.

These aren’t necessarily the worst games of the year, but they were disappointing for a variety of reasons.

The Most Disappointing Games of 2012

But Assassin’s Creed III is also really slow (especially in the beginning) and at times quite boring. While the game’s combat was overhauled, it was only a slight improvement.

That’s the real problem with Assassin’s Creed III and with all the Assassin’s Creed games. Combat is boring, stealth is never important enough, and the action is never all that good. Climbing towers and diving into hay bales is fun, but it’s not enough to keep the game interesting.

#5 – Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 3 is a pretty good game all around. I’ve never been a huge fan of the franchise—too many cut-scenes for my taste—and I thought that in many ways Mass Effect 3 improved on older games, including its combat and graphics.

But there was one major, glaring flaw: the ending. I don’t need to recap. Suffice to say, no game I’ve ever seen has generated so much controversy. BioWare eventually released an extended ending for the game, but the damage was done.

Tack on the day-one DLC and you’ve got yourself a pretty big mess, even if most of the game was just fine.

#4 – Diablo 3

I actually liked Diablo III quite a bit, though like Mass Effect 3 I thought the ending was pretty awful. In fact, the story was pretty awful all around, and the game was much too linear for its own good.

Indeed, the most disappointing thing about Diablo III to me was the way the combat doesn’t actually make use of weapons. It really doesn’t matter what you equip—all your loot is just there for stats-boosting. The game had (and still has) lots of potential but even despite Blizzard’s ongoing efforts, it remains a pretty big letdown.

Despite its really awful opening moments, Kingdoms of Amalur actually was fun for a while. Combat was decent and I enjoyed the colorful world—until suddenly I stopped enjoying it at all. You see, Kingdoms of Amalur is sort of hard at first and then it gets really, painfully easy.

Enemy AI is simply not very good, and gear is way overpowered. I could deal with the generic world and its generic story and accept it all as a sort of tribute to cheesy epic fantasy, but the combat becomes so flat so quickly that the whole game just falls apart.

You know, the only reason I had my hopes up so high for Realms of Ancient War was my fondness for Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. That game has a special place in my heart, and I’ve been hoping for a console action-RPG like it for some time. There’s just not enough good local co-op games out there.

So RAW comes along and the early images and videos look pretty good. But the game, I’m sorry to say, was simply abysmal. It looked terrible, the play was slow and repetitive, and there was an annoying death system that made loot-hunting a pointless chore.

Maybe some enterprising indie developer will come along and fill this terrible, gaping void….

The series has gone downhill and I worry that the only thing that might save it will be the HBO adaptation.

But far worse than any moment in Feast for Crows or Dance with Dragons was the RPG adaptation that finally came out last year after seven long years of development by Cyanide.

The game was simply bad in every conceivable way, from its stilted and repetitive combat to its awful textures, to its slow story that tried oh-so-hard to be gritty.

Nothing irritates me more than fantasy that tries too hard to be dark—and I say this as a fan of dark fantasy, gritty television shows like Breaking Bad, etc.

The humanity that makes Martin’s work so compelling was missing entirely from Game of Thrones the game. And yeah, the combat was just awful.

Truly, these books deserve a better video game.

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Okay, so now it’s your turn. What was the most disappointing video game of the year? I think overall 2012 had some astounding titles—often too many to keep up with—but there were definitely some black marks as well.

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As a huge fan of the series (All 1-4), I was actually looking forward to a few shifts to the game, which had become a little too formulaic between games 3 and 4. But I found that the game I loved had been completely and utterly tossed out, and replaced with an absurdly simple arcade racer that so blatantly pandered to not-me demographics that I traded the game back in within a week.

No real tracks. At all. Around 3/4ths of the stable of cars to choose from: gone. NO PORSCHES (seriously?). A soundtrack shorter than most mix CDs and completely filled with indie-pop, emo and the most predictable EDM in the land. Half of the songs I already knew from their constant rotation in various TV commercials.

But the worst part? The worst part was that they completely eradicated any sense of real physics at all. In FH, you can throttle your car up to 200+ mph, run straight into another car, knock them out of the way, and KEEP GOING. I figured out quickly that there were more situations where it would be faster for me to drive THROUGH another car than to try and go around them.

In an era where simulation racing games had reduced to just two: Forza and Gran Turismo, I found out that in fact, that number had been cut in half.

Well i don’t think i play as many games as you so i will limit mine to two most disappointed games of 2012:

2 – Hitman Absolution Had high expectation for this game. Am a huge fan of the previous titles. Unfortunately the story is extremely bland and boring. The maps are very constricted and cliché. And seriously, game developers have to stop sexify all games. I am of course referring to the kung-fu nuns in skimpy leather tights that cheapens an already cheap story.

1 – Mass effect 3 To be frank Hitman is no where near this game in terms of disappointment. The only game that i have been more disappointed by than ME3 is Dragon age 2. The sad thing is that while the ending, and the EC-ending if you ask me, is a scar on the series it only serves as a smokescreen for the other more glaring problems in the game.

Compare this game with it’s predecessors and you will notice that you barely get to decide what Shepard is going to say. The majority of dialogue is delivered automatically. I would have no problem with this if it weren’t for the fact that the predecessors did not do this. And worse yet the predecessors let you define your Shepard only to get ME3′s auto-dialogue to contradict this. And when you finally get to participate in a conversation you now only have two extreme choices to choose from, paragon or renegade.

The concept of exploring the galaxy have been reduced to using your sonar in a star system to find various assets of interest on planets. But unlike ME1, and ME2 to a lesser degree, you don’t actually get to go down on the planets and explore them.

I could go on and on about how this game have more in common with Gears of war than Mass effect but i will instead leave it at this; the main reason why this game is such a disappointment to me is that it finally made me realize that my favorite game developer since the mid 90s no longer make games i enjoy playing.

Mass Effect 3 could have been one of the best games ever made, we all know Bioware has the talent, but instead we got a game that is so full of wasted potential it feels unfinished to a lot of people .

Mass Effect 3 definitely belongs there. There is, however, a misconception among a lot of people that “The game and writing were great, it was only the last ten minutes that ruined it”. In my opinion, the entire game was a linear somewhat enjoyabe coordiror shooter with dialogue, and the writing was shit through out the entire experience. Bioware really couldn’t do better than this? And the inclusion of “story mode”? Seriously, what the hell? All in all, Mass Effect 3 is okay, and quite fun from time to time, but sadly a lot of gaming sites are crawling over each other to give it a GOTY award, undeservedly.

I actually found story mode handy. Due to not being able to import my created character’s features properly, I opted out of the full experience so that I could experience just the story. People give too much crap about having too many options, I mean, why should games just be for the hardcore audience? Why can’t there be games for people who don’t want to die over and over again, and want to have a streamlined story experience?

I do agree, that it doesn’t deserve GOTY though. And again, not so much for the ending, as I actually enjoyed the thrill of destroying everything that I had worked so hard for! haha :)

And the characterization. And the plot. And the narrative. And the gameplay. And the profit margin. And the last words being downloadable content. And their blatant disregard for logic and consumer pleasing.